Date of chart completion
If a chart is completed a day or two later than the appointment, I want it to still be dated/filed for the appointment date, but time stamped that it was signed/completed on the actual date. What happens now is that a chart signed a day or two later gets filed and listed chronologically rather than when the appointment was completed. I think it makes more logistic sense to get filed along with the appointment date it is associated with. (obviously the goal is to complete the day of the appointment, but we are human and that doesn't always happen)
Rachael Taylor
shared this idea
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Lauren Muir
commented
Yes, this is incredibly frustrating and should be changed. Charts and treatment documentation should be filed and displayed according to the actual treatment date entered in the chart, not simply the date the provider happened to finish or submit the documentation.
There should absolutely still be a separate, immutable timestamp showing when the chart was actually completed/signed, but that should not determine where the note appears chronologically in the patient record.
If a patient was treated on Monday and I finish the chart Tuesday, that documentation belongs with Monday’s encounter, not mixed into Tuesday’s records. Otherwise, the timeline becomes unnecessarily confusing and makes it harder to quickly understand what happened and when.
The cleanest workflow would be:
- Treatment date = where the chart is filed and sorted in the medical record
- Completion/signature timestamp = when it was actually finalized
Both pieces of information matter, but they serve different purposes. The patient record should be organized around the date care was actually provided.